Paper print
Paper prints of films were an early mechanism to establish the copyright of motion pictures by depositing them with the Library of Congress.
An unintended but fortunate side-effect is that while the actual films and negatives of this period often decayed or were destroyed, the paper prints sat ignored until the 1940s and were conserved.
Paper prints, though, came with their own unpredictable nature, bringing migration challenges that rival the difficulties involved with the analog/digital conversions of today.
Librarian Howard Walls made the discovery and described the scene this way: That vault had been open to all kinds of weather, but the grating was over a shaft so it never rained in there, it never snowed in there.
[3]: 36 Walls recruited a National Archives motion picture engineer, pioneer cinematographer Carl Louis Gregory, to help get the movies back into shape for screening.
Modifying a process optical printer, he was able to exchange sprocket heads and pull down pins that were necessary to advance the film and yet not tear it to pieces.
Later, Howard Walls would devote his time primarily to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and would try to initiate a program to rescue the paper prints at the Library.
He ranted about "some little man with a movie picture camera of his very own, constructed from a cigar box, some spare parts from a plow, and pieces of his grandmother’s sewing machine.
Another problem encountered by Niver and not discovered in any details of Gregory's efforts at the Library, is just what happens to photographs that have been tightly rolled up for four decades or more.
Niver saw the prints gain some of their original flat disposition and found an added benefit of a soft surface glaze which made for a more definitive image for capture back to film.
Niver's rationale for this is three-fold: the end users would likely be students and the format was simple to use, storage space was not in abundance, and costs were kept low.
He also publicized his efforts, which led to “a great number of requests for copies of early films.”[5] The Mark VIII is now with the UCLA film archive while an original restoration printer went into use at Ohio State.
Still he did have at least one critic at the time, a film historian who found the guide to his work "full of curious categorization and arbitrary cross-indexing, as well as a great deal of needless duplication.
The Library of Congress had reported “widespread dissatisfaction with image loss in the earlier… preservation” and resolved to recopy the paper prints to 35 mm.
"[8] Now, the Library's website for the Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division proudly announces that the paper prints, their most active collection, are transferring to "vastly superior new 35 mm copies.
